[pseudalopex]

> Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?

> People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this because it’s very hard to get a teenager to accept something that is not “normal” in their friend group.

It would follow from your argument a solution would be to make this normal. A solution to make this normal would be to classify as child abuse to give an under 16 more than short access to a device without parental controls.

This would not be a good law. But it would be less bad.